Playing Games on the SMART Table

I’m a big fan of SMART Board’s SMART Technologies, the Canadian company behind one of the leading interactive whiteboards. Warren Buckleitner, the editor of Children’s Technology Review, attended the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s conference, NAEYC 09, where he filmed a nice bit on SMART Technologies’ new SMART Table.

The SMART Table reminds me of the old Ms. PacMan tabletop game of the 1980s, where two players could square off with one another while seated (and yes, I threw far too many quarters down the gullet of one such machine in a College Station eatery way back when).

It also reminds me of Dr. Merrick’s table top computer portrayed in the movie The Island, which was the brain spawn of an MIT consultant for the film.

Various games and activities are included with the SMART Table, including puzzles, mazes, and arithmetic problems embedded in a fun environment. On one, a money game, kids have to slide representations of coins to indicate the cost of an item. Buckleitner asks the SMART rep, jokingly, “So kids could actually gamble and do poker in preschool?” I had to smile since we talked about poker in school earlier today.

Buckleitner seems a bit concerned about the $8,000 price tag for the SMART Table, but if past success is any indicator SMART Technologies will sell plenty of them. Here’s Buckleitner’s video:

A New Book Explores the Educational and Social Benefits of Poker

Games are an important part of childhood development, and informal learning often takes place through a child’s game play. As children mature, the games they engage in and enjoy may get more complex, progressing from something like Candy Land to Checkers to Chess. The informal learning in these complex games increases as well, as do the social aspects.

Poker, whether played for chips, pennies, or serious money, is finding increased academic scrutiny as its continued popularity shows no sign of fading. James McManus, a writing and literature professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who teaches a course on the literature of poker, has a new book on the game: Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker. A very nice adaptation/excerpt is printed in the Chronicle, and you can read it online here.

Rather than focusing on empirical studies surrounding the game, McManus is interested in what the literature of poker has to say. He’s fascinated with the game’s influence on powerful figures, including most of America’s past Presidents (Obama plays poker, too) and industrial figures such as Bill Gates.

He notes academic interest has definitely been piqued:

The Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society was founded in 2006 by the Harvard Law School professors Charles Nesson and Lawrence Lessig, the communications maven Jonathan Cohen, and Andrew Woods, a law student. Nesson had cofounded Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Lessig had started the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University. Lessig was author of The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, while Cohen had built a variety of software and communications companies. Woods had graduated magna cum laude from the University of California at Los Angeles, where he started the Bruin Casino Gaming Society, the first officially recognized student organization devoted to the study and teaching of poker.

Those at the GPSTS and elsewhere in academia remain convinced that poker holds high benefits for social and educational development. Much as video games have had to fight for academic legitimacy due to their ties to the entertainment industry, so too has poker had to fight due to its ties to gambling. Private poker parties for money are generally allowed in the States, but much conversation on the GPSTS site centers around legislative and court rulings on whether poker is primarily a game of chance or skill. If chance, it’s gambling and thus verboten in most circumstances. If skill, it’s tolerable to the regulatory powers that be.

From a pedagogical perspective, McManus makes the following observations:

Above all, [Harvard Law School Professor Charles] Nesson makes the case for using poker as a means to helping students understand the world from others’ points of view. In his own classes, he trains lawyers “to see in the game a language for thinking about and an environment for experiencing the dynamics of strategy in dispute resolution.” At the simplest level, he shows how the game can help middle-school students understand percentages and budget making, as well as how to “read” their opponents.

We’re probably a ways off from the day where a middle school teacher can include a few hands of poker in her lesson plans, and not have to explain why to administrators and parents. Nonetheless, this book goes a long way toward legitimizing poker as a valid research subject.

Online Poker Practice Helps Increase Real World Winnings

Can playing poker online increase skills when playing for real? One young man has personal anecdotal evidence that it does. In a local boy makes good story from the Bryan/College Station Eagle, Jordan Smith has just returned from the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. He placed 10th, thus losing out for a chance at the final rounds for a share of the $27 million dollar jackpot. However, the college dropout and professional poker player did score almost a million dollars in winnings.

With very little outside help, Smith said, he improved his poker skills by practicing online.

“The more you play, the more you learn,” he said, adding that he had played more than a million hands online. “Playing online is not that different [from live games]; you just get a lot more hands in. When you’re playing live, you can only play one tournament and you can get about 20 to 30 hands in. But online, you can play eight tournaments at one time and play 60 to 100 hands in an hour. Online, you learn at a much faster rate, and you get to play more tournaments.”

Read the entire story here.

References:
Jaramillo, E. (2009, July 26). CS man scores big in poker tourney. The Eagle, A9.

Facebook Adds to Appeal with Zynga Game Network

There has been buzz before about the similarities of social networks and MMO videogames. Both involve interactive screen time. Both involve use of the Internet, cooperation, and social activities. Both have also been criticized for overuse and for a variety of public ailments.

So it comes as little surprise that social sites have taken steps to integrate videogames in an effort to provide members more reasons to stay online and spend time with one another. Brad Stone has a nice article in The New York Times this week on the efforts of the Zynga Game Network to create online games for Facebook. Facebook opened up its network to developers to create third party apps, to much success (the recent award “Blog of the Week” for this blog is linked to one such app, TopNetPix).

The games are simple and traditional, such as Texas hold ’em poker, blackjack, and Boggle. Members can play with their friends, and invite others to the game. Developers keep ad revenue, so both Facebook and Zynga profit from the increased interactivity on the site from videogames. Here’s the money quote:

“People already love to play casual games,” said Fred Wilson, a partner at the venture capital firm Union Square Ventures, which led a $10 million round of financing in Zynga. “But when you take a casual game and stick it inside a social network, it becomes way more exciting. This is like pouring gasoline on fire.”

The interactive nature of games and the idea of injecting a little fun into an activity appeals to serious game makers. I can see the notion of a team inside a virtual interactive environment (VIE) engaging in a game to help solve a learning objective as a viable possibility. At its simplest levels, math can be easily game-ified, or taught within the context of other games. For instance, a learner in a VIE could engage in a virtual card game and be taught the odds of drawing to a flush versus drawing to a straight. Likewise vocabulary building, spelling, and other lower level reading skills are all easily incorporated in videogames.

One such game that might have some small educational appeal on Facebook, Scrabulous, is under legal assault by Hasbro, owner of Scrabble.

References:
Associated Press. (2008, January 17). Makers of Scrabble target Facebook version of game. The Wall Street Journal, p.B4.

Stone, B. (2008, January 15). More than games, a net to snare social networkers. The New York Times. [Online.] Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/technology/15facebook.htm

Online Gambling: A Press Release from Gibraltar

I had to laugh today while browsing news releases. I came across this one from Belle Rock Entertainment’s Online Casinos, which operates out of Gibraltar. Recall that the US bans online gambling, even if the site is offshore, and this peeves European casinos. So much so, they and some Caribbean nations have filed suit with the World Trade Organization against the US and the offending legislation. I’m not a fan of gambling, and I don’t condone it. But, I’m interested in research on the human element surrounding the risk of personal money with online gaming.

Reading the press release from Belle Rock, I’m struck with the similarities to mainstream MMORPGs. Here is a sample quote:

Gladiator is an online video slot of truly epic proportions set in Ancient Rome and features a massive 50 pay-lines. Its hero is a robust but romantic gladiator and when the sparks fly between him and his Roman Maiden, players score all the way with a Mixed Pay reward.

A gladiator’s battles resulting in rewards? Sounds a lot like World of Warcraft only with real money at stake. Take a look at this paragraph:

For those who prefer the snowy winterscapes of colder climates, Snow Honeys, is a feature rich, 5 reel 20 pay-line, entertainment-packed video slot. It has uber-cool mountain ski resort graphics, complete with bronzed ski instructors, Mounties, hibernating bears and snow Bunnies. The easy-on-the-eye ski-girls who show the way to a generous mix of Free Spins, Scatters, multipliers and a major Bonus feature, will delight any slot player. Adjacent Ice Castles could deliver up to 100 x multipliers and also enable the player to open up the second screen Hide and Seek bonus selection of 5 out of 12 winning windows in the castle. When the Ski Resort Scatter symbols combine, the player can score up to 30 Free Spins with a 5x multiplier and five of these adjacent will result in a massive 100x multiplier booster. Snow Honeys offer high energy slot action and has brilliant audio effects. Wagers from as little as 0.01 up to 0.5 coins can be made, making wins of up to 20 000 coins in the base game, 100 000 coins on the Free Spins and 10 000 coins on the bonus game possible.

It’s a neat press release, and it makes me hope that researchers concerned with online gambling will investigate the ramifications of combining elements of online gaming and social networks with the free spending nature of offshore wagering sites.

Online Gambling: Regulations vs. Research

Speaking in broad generalizations, I’ve often noted the things Europeans seem to abhor versus the things Americans generally abhor. This is often expressed legislatively. Americans like gun ownership. Europeans don’t. Americans like the death penalty. Europeans don’t. Europeans are okay with women doffing their tops at the beach. Americans generally aren’t okay with that. Europeans think nothing of children sipping wine at dinner, or letting a teen quaff a pint. Americans are shocked with the notion, and prohibit legal drinking until age 21. Europeans are okay with online gambling. Americans are not.

It’s this last generalization that has cropped up recently again, as we Americans seek to align commerce with our brethren across the pond. Previous commercial alignment has resulted in soda being sold in one and two liter bottles over here, where we stubbornly cling to the English measurement system whilst the rest of the world goes Metric. Another example is Microsoft’s recent agreement to abide by European anti-monopolist regulations.

Most recently, the Europeans have expressed their ire at American regulations on online gambling. First, US regulators let it be known that gambling sites were discouraged on American soil. The Caribbean, however, has several island nations a short plane ride away, with governments more amenable to profitable online sites. Next, the US passed a law stating that online gambling simply cannot take place at all on American soil. Gambling sites responded by continuing to take credit card payments on the sly, and the fun continued. Finally, the US cracked down on the card companies, arrested some site operators who happened to be passing through American airports, and generally put the kibosh on online gambling.

The EU and Caribbean nations such as Antigua have brought a complaint against the US law to the World Trade Commission, and continue to argue against what they see as overly restrictive US regulations. Namely, this coalition contends Americans should have the luxury of gambling online if the site is not based in the US. The US law essentially violates the rights of offshore gambling sites, they say.

There’s little doubt that gambling can lead some down the path of ruin. Europeans who’ve read Dostoevsky’s The Gambler surely know this. Ironically, legal gambling has become more accessible to Americans down through the years. When I was growing up, folks had to travel to Las Vegas or Atlantic City to legally gamble. Now with the proliferation of state lotteries and casinos on reservations, riverboats, and elsewhere, legal gambling in the real world is far more widespread than it ever was in the past.

The interesting thing about gambling from an academic perspective is that money influences things in ways nothing else can. It’s one thing to pretend to invest in the stock market, or place a virtual bet. It’s quite another to use your own money from your own account.

Gambling also fuels ongoing research into addiction, such as Fong’s work at UCLA. It’s true that people can get “addicted” to almost anything. I’ve long argued there is a difference between chemical addictions and behavioral addictions. Unfortunately, most news journalists make little difference between the two, and we’ve read stories equating videogame players with heroin addicts, etc.

There is something about interacting with a video screen that truly focuses people. I recall reading about the introduction of television at the 1939 World’s Fair. One writer remarked that folks did not have enough time to sit around and watch the contraption. Once World War II was over, and RCA could get about the business of transforming radio networks to television networks, people found plenty of time to sit down and watch television.

Combining true interaction, beyond yelling at the set, was advanced by Willy Higginbotham at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1958 when he hooked up a couple of paddle wheels to play virtual tennis on an oscilloscope. About the same time, Ralph Baer was thinking about interactive games for television, and he began developing schematics and a prototype in 1966.

Since then, this interactive element with the screen has caught fire in ways nobody foresaw. Now, people around the world can play online with one another in everything from simulated card games to mock battles with virtual monsters. Video poker and gambling ported to online environments combine the attention-grabbing aspects of videogames with the allure of gambling.

Online gambling creates a strong pool of research material because it combines two highly interactive elements to which players can become “addicted” (a better term is “overuse,” especially for online time or videogame play). I think we’ll see some interesting papers coming out of UCLA and elsewhere in the near future. In the meantime, folks wanting to gamble online in the comfort of their homes will have to wait, if they live in America. Or, they can hop a flight over to Europe and gamble online whilst on the beach. There, they can go topless as well. Maybe have a drink, if they’re underage.

Checkers Research Culminates in Unbeatable Chinook

Computer scientists have perfected an unbeatable checkers opponent. University of Alberta researchers have finalized coding for the Chinook program, which always wins against human opponents. The best any player can hope to do against Chinook’s algorithms is a draw.

Jonathan Schaeffer, a computer science professor at Alberta, has been coding the program since 1989. Although checkers allows 500 billion billion possible moves, Schaeffer and his team were able to develop a “computational proof” that makes the program virtually unbeatable. Schaeffer is now setting his sites on poker research.

Chinook can be played against online, if you’d care to test Schaeffer’s computational proof. Click here to try.

Click here for a list of publications on the work Alberta Dept. of Computer Science researchers have been doing in this area. Schaeffer and team members published the results of their research in the most recent issue of Science.

References

Chang, K. (2007, July 19). Computer program smashes checkers pros. International Herald Tribune. [Online]. Available: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/19/news/checkers.php

Schaeffer, J., Burch, N., Björnsson, Y., Kishimoto, A., Müller, M., Lake, R., Lu, P., & Sutphen, S. (2007, July 20). Checkers is solved. Science 317(5836). 308-309.

WSJ and Online Poker

The Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating Page One article recently on academic efforts to illustrate poker as a game of skill rather than a game of luck. The issue has roots even in the name of the game, which allegedly derives from the Old French poquer, which translates, “to bet.”

Anyone who knows anything about the game realizes there is a certain element involving “luck of the draw.” But there is, of course, much more to playing the game successfully than just pulling a good hand. Obviously, if a player draws a high hand then lets on to other players, the player’s probability of winning a large pot will decline. Likewise, if a player has only a so-so hand but is able to bluff through the betting process, their probability of winning the pot increases.

Another element lending credence to the argument for poker being considered a game of skill is the need for understanding the odds of drawing a winning hand. Poker has seen streaks of popularity in the US before, most recently in the 1950s and 60s when home poker tournaments were all the rage. During that time, a variety of books were published with the goal of training readers in understanding the odds involved, especially after discarding in the first round of 5 card draw.

For instance, when drawing four cards in hopes of gaining a pair of aces, players should know there are three more aces and they have four shots at getting another. But, when drawing for one card to complete a royal flush, players have one shot in 52 to get the card they need. This is simplified, of course, since the needed card might have been drawn by one of the other players, and the number of players affects the odds. Other examples exist, such as drawing one card to complete a straight being less likely than drawing one card to complete a flush, and so forth.

Therefore, knowledgeable players will bet accordingly based on knowledge of the odds. If they have a better chance at successfully drawing for a high hand, they will bet more. If they have a lower chance of getting the high hand, they will bet less. However, novice players often bet on emotion. They may think, “I have a shot at a royal flush!” and bet with abandon, never minding that the odds of getting that one card are slim.

There are several other aspects of the game the old books delved into, many of them human factors. I recall reading one suggestion to always serve alcohol while imbibing little oneself. This way, as other players become increasingly inebriated, the reader’s chances of winning increase by remaining sober. Other suggestions included watching for accidentally flashed cards, using cheap decks that become increasingly scuffed over time (memorizing what cards are scuffed constitutes a legitimate form of reading “marked” cards; marking cards yourself, say by bending the aces slightly at the corner, remains unethical), and noting suit colors through the reflections off other players’ glasses.

Finally, attention to player habits helps gain an upper edge. If a cautious player always folds after failing to draw the one card needed to complete a straight or flush then later starts betting, perhaps they finally managed to complete their hand. A famous scene in the TV show M.A.S.H. showed a successful player whistling when he had a high hand. Other tics or foibles may be noticed by observant players over the long run.

When we start dealing with numbers, statisticians come out of the woodwork. Nothing intrigues statisticians more than the practical application of their art, whether in sports or politics or popular games. The WSJ article noted three academics with current research in the field of poker. The article highlights a conference presided over by Charles Nesson at Harvard Law. The issue has legal ramifications, because if the US Congress considers poker a game of skill, it can be played online. If poker is considered a game of chance, it remains gambling and cannot be played online (for real money, anyway) under current law. “It’s about time poker became a subject of academic inquiry,” the article quotes Nesson as saying.

The article lists two other academic endeavors to analyze the statistical components of games. First, Jay Kadane over at Carnegie Mellon attended the conference seeking support for research looking at teems of data from video poker games. Steven Levitt, over at Chicago, who co-authored Freakonomics which helped popularize economic theory to the general public, is coordinating a project called Pokernomics. Levitt’s project signs up volunteers to load their playing data online. Volunteers are expected to participate in at least 10,000 hands to help secure the statistics.

Online video games take a different tack when money is involved. Folks who do just fine using simulated money often play differently when their own money is involved. Gambling, with its possibilities of high reward for little apparent effort, mixes in another statistically intriguing element to game play, as opposed to investing or some other online manipulation of finances. Considerably more academic interest in the years ahead is a safe bet.

References

King, N., Jr. (2007, May 3). Harvard ponders just what it takes to excel at poker. The Wall Street Journal, p.A1.